Gotta admit — as a 21-year-old hardcore Trekkie, I loathed the first Star Wars movie, because it seemed designed to evoke every cheap, witless, strutting, shopworn emotion that I most despised in my fellow nerds. Still not a Star Wars fan, but forty-plus years later, I’m old enough to have learned that even the most evolved humans sometimes want the comfort and joy of expensively produced, predictable variations on familiar themes the entire family can appreciate. Once upon a time…

We went to convenience store to get some laundry detergent to wash some clothes in a sink. We didn’t appreciate how difficult it was to tell detergent from powdered bleach from who knows what else. We had to get help to figure out what to get.

Another memory is of being in Tokyo to get some fast food (kinda Korean barbecue or similar). We were standing around a rectangular counter with the stove in the center and the women working there were yelling in this ear-piercing tone. It was painful. (Apparently the culture was that women in such roles were expected to talk in extremely high screechy voices.)

Oh, and the “french bakery” stores had beautiful displays of pastries and the like, but they used very little sugar or fat in the ingredients so they tasted very bland to our spoiled palates.

Gotta admit — as a 21-year-old hardcore Trekkie, I loathed the first Star Wars movie, because it seemed designed to evoke every cheap, witless, strutting, shopworn emotion that I most despised in my fellow nerds.

Yeah, but for a five-year-old budding girl nerd, Princess Leia was EVERYTHING. She, Sarah Jane Smith and Colonel Wilma Deering (though only season one Colonel Deering) were my idols through a tough childhood. Though I’m not all that excited for this one because I never liked Han Solo. Nine-year-old me hated him and Leia hooking up in The Empire Strikes Back because he was always so mean to her. Ah, Han Solo. Even long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, he was all about negging.

I loved The Last Jedi. It said the rebellion would be led by middle-aged women, which I have no problem with.

FYWP permits only *one* line-space between blocks of text/videos/objects. When I need more white space, for comprehension or just elegance, I use a single period to ‘force’ another open line. At one point I’d bracket such periods to shift them to the far right, but these days I have to hand-type every dam’ format instruction, and life’s not long enough.

You have a swifter fix than div-align-equal-right, end-div-align-equal-right, by all means let me know!

I liked Rogue One; it reminded me a bit of the very first Star Wars film, albeit in a WW2 mission-movie mold and less Lucas-ey. The rest, not so much, though they get watched if on TV/cable. Did not forgive the franchise for turning the force-ability into a purely inherited talent.
Will definitely watch Solo, in a movie theater.

I loved both Star Wars and Star Trek. Never saw any reason to have to choose between them.

I saw Star Wars when it premiered, at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood. From the reaction of the crowd and some murmurs, I understood that a lot of people saw the movie earlier in the day and immediately bought tickets for the next available show. The fans who loved it took it to heart immediately. It was a blast.

I’m curious to see the new Solo film. It’s pointless to try to get a clone of Harrison Ford. And hell, I remember when true Batman fans thought that casting Heath Ledger as the Joker was the worst casting decision ever.

I was a fan of ST, but I loved the first Star Wars movie. Because it had a lot of clever lines in it, and excellent SFX? And absolutely because it had a pretty kick-ass Leia. In comparison, even as a callow teen, I found a lot of Roddenbury’s heavy-handed messaging so, uh, heavy-handed.

Can’t say I’ve watched much ST beyond the Next Gen. I’ve taken the advice of manymany fannish friends and have never seen any of the SW prequels. We saw the Last Jedi (?) in a cinema. Mr S hated it, I was mostly Meh, and I won’t get him to watch whatever the next one is, even at home.

My daughter spent film study grad school fighting that concept, and she’s right. That kind of elitist bullshit is why so many critics are shits.
First saw SW when it came out in ’77 (already over 30). I was blown away (as was future mrs efg) by the visual effects and Dolby sound, right from the opening roll. Great script? No. Basically a space western? Yup. Westerns worked, too.

Alden Ehrenreich, who played the cowboy actor Hobie Doyle in “Hail, Caesar!” I adored him in that, and am looking forward to seeing him in “Solo.”

Me too! Physical resemblance means nothing if the actor is good enough. Case in point, Gary Oldman looks nothing like Winston Churchill — Brian Cox, who played Churchill in the other Churchill movie last year, is much closer physically; but Oldman was fantastic and Cox was done in by a terrible script. Or Steve Buscemi as Khrushchev in the hilarious The Death of Stalin (which btw everyone should rush right out and see).

As for “irredeemable shit” — they looked down on Shakespeare in his day, that’s why Ben Jonson felt he had to defend him.

Mom drove us across town to see the original Star Wars in 70mm on a Cinerama screen. Go mom! Always liked both Wars and Trek. Never saw a reason not to fan them both.

Watch Killing Eve tonight on BBCAmerica. Very, very good first episode Sandra Oh and the princess fromThe White Princess as assassin and assassin chaser. Written by the woman who,did Fleabag, so she gets how interesting women have chaotic lives. Fiona Shaw is the head of the Russia desk, who grabs Oh, when the men ignore what she gets right, and try to make her the fall guy for their errors. It will be eight episodes, I’m in.

Bob Hoskins did a very nice turn as Chrurchill in When Lions Roared. John Lithgow, albeit somewhat shakily, managed to pull off portraying FDR without too many cracks in the facade showing. Michael Caine as Stalin, not so much.

I’m kinda joking about Romero, because I don’t have much need to rank Jokers.

Going back to the OP, which franchise’s low points are worse? (For Star Trek: “Code of Honor,” “Threshold,” “Dear Doctor,” and “A Night In Sickbay.”)

I bailed on Enterprise, which I just found to be unwatchable. It is the nature of episodic tv that you are going to have some clunkers. But I will still watch almost any Trek episode if I have the time.

Enterprise, for me, was just dull and listless from top to bottom. I hear it got better in later seasons, but I just didn’t care.

I hated the premise of Voyager, or Gilligan’s Island in Space. But I liked most of the cast of Voyager. And Seven of Nine. I loved original Trek, but I thought that Deep Space Nine was the best series overall.

@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): Low points for ST must include Catspaw, Spock’s Brain, and The Omega Glory (despite that I tear up at Kirk’s speech about the Constitution at the end), and Voyager’s Genesis. I’m blanking on the awful eps of TNG and ENT at the moment, though the bit in Next Gen where Geordi recreates a real-life female engineer in the holodeck and falls for her simulatcrum is creepy (though overmatched when, later on, even after she sees the simulacrum, it’s implied that she later marries him). Yeah, ST’s record on portrayals of sexuality is somewhere between poor and atrocious

One of my favorite jokes about Star Trek is from Futurama’s Where No Fan Has Gone Before. The whole episode is a good Star Trek home, but it starts with them deciding which six movies to watch. Fry says “you know what six movies average out to be pretty good? The first six Star Trek movies!”

Being both a Trekkie and a Star Wars fan, I’ve never had a problem not liking one or the other (although the utterly idiotic Star Trek V tested my patience. Enterprise was a disaster, except for a few pretty decent episodes (the Mirror Universe two parter was very good indeed). Even though Phantom Menace sucked, I still got the DVD, because, Star Wars!

I also never understood the antagonism between some Trekkies and some B5 fans. DS9 is my favorite Trek, and I loved the series arc of B5.

@Villago Delenda Est: Enterprise had SOME very good episodes – especially in the first season, when they were really milking the “no one’s done this before” premise. The episode where they had to keep running because their phasers weren’t installed was pretty great. That was… what, episode 4?

I grew up on both franchises – used to rewind and watch the Death Star Trench battle a few times a day when I was 5 or 6, and I remember watching the Star Trek movies with my dad in the theater. They’re both fun, good franchises (and the latter Trek movies were sometimes more Star-Warsy than classic Trek in any case).

I’ve also had next to no interest in a Han Solo movie, but these trailers are slowly selling it to me. I really like the ‘new’ Millenium Falcon.

@Brachiator:
Most certainly DS9 was the best. Even better than TNG seasons 3-6 (seasons 1-2 had some decent episodes too). They learned from their mistakes with Wesley on how to write likeable “kid” characters which I thought was a breath of fresh air. Wesley got better later on but was an annoying know-it-all shit in season 1.

This may be an unpopular opinion but I thought Wesley Crushes had lost potential as a character, given his history with Picard as well as his own father. IIRC, their relationship was written terribly (Picard and Wesley) and was awkward.

I’ve been watching Season 1 of ST:TNG in the last week and two things stood out to me regarding the characters – lots of Season 1 episodes are Riker-centered and they really did a disservice to Wesley Crusher with how annoying they made him.

I think I recall that you liked Silent Running, which is what I most despise in 70s nerds. Hope I’m wrong.

I barely remember Silent Running, so you’re wrong. Although, at some point, I may’ve said I thought R2D2 was a cultural descendent of the Silent Running greenhouse robots, which was hardly a novel criticism.

@efgoldman:
Jake Sisko and Nog from DS9 weren’t. He was a poorly written character, sorry. The final slap in the face was when Wesley was put on the windowless van with that traveler alien to become a god.

And besides that character isn’t very entertaining when the narrative is confused on whether we are meant to like the character or hate him.

If I get a Disney Star Wars for free on a flight I might watch. I took a free view of Last Jedi… and that did not break even for me, even when I paid zero. I lost value watching it. I would have been better off staring blankly at an empty space. My own voided mind was preferable. I don’t get what they want to convey.

You know what I hated about the first star wars movie. Until it came along, all movies cost $2.50 but Star Wars was $4! I told everyone if they go see the movie and that price all movies will go up to $4. And, they did. No $3 movies, no $3.50, etc. Everything went from $2.50 to $4. I didn’t see that movie for two years when it came to some theaters that charged only $1. But, I hate sci-fi so it wasn’t like I missed much in my mind.

I was a big Trek fan as a child but I found TNG ruined it for me. I found TNG eyeroll material with things like no on-bridge conflict, Wesley Crusher, and the Ferengi, but it also opened my eye to flaws in TOS so after I saw it I couldn’t enjoy TOS so much either. To be fair, I was also becoming disenchanted with TV in general as I’d largely stopped watching it a few years before. I did become a big fan of the first three seasons of B5 later, though.

@The Dangerman: Quite a while ago there was a feature piece about Lucas in the New Yorker. The story went that he did some kind of work in progress screening of the first film for friends and insiders. None of the special effects had been done yet, so Lucas had inserted black and white WWII air battles as placeholders.

Everyone there thought it was going to be a catastrophe… except Speilberg, who said something like, “That film is going to make millions of dollars.” Because even though the plot was nearly unfathomable in the pre-screening, Speilberg could still sense the fundamentals of the story were going to be very compelling.

@Fair Economist:
Even seasons 3-6 of TNG? To each his own. If you liked Babylon 5 you’ll definitely like DS9. Though TNG had continuity to it, DS9 had continuing storylines that stretched past single episodes and two-parters to multiple-season-spanning ones

Loved em both, it’s not exclusive for me. Most of my friends are equally agnostic in the ST/SW stuff as well. We play the Star Wars and Star Trek role playing games on a staggered schedule, and they’re both a good time.

@efgoldman: My brother and I (who would have been… somewhere between 9 and 14 at the time, can’t quite remember) absolutely LOVED Wesley. I still like the character, actually – and they did some great things with him later.

Sort’va Proust n his madeleines moment for me, this post. (T’associative train a memory is a powerful thing n triggered by the most unexpected n innocuous of impet(i); reckon since I wreck everything lingual anyways [ask anyone!], why not foist a neologism on the ravening horde just for lagniappe.)

Point being: Outta curiosity, rewatched the original Star Wars trilogy recently; had not seen any of the three since their original release. It’s allus inneresting revisiting a fixed memory to see how it fares. When I were a wee snot-nosed sprite in the summer a ’77, single mother soon to die, me not understanding anything but my own rage and frustration atta unfair world (poor me!), I saw Star Wars multiple times. Prolly a dozen or more. Avidly. Manically. Near ’bout voraciously. Growing up as a a street urchin eating gubmint cheese in the yet-to-be-(openly)-poisoned city of Flint, I remember sneaking into the theater repeatedly (just walk/barge past whoever’s sposed to be “in charge” like you own the place, like you belong there; if the angry/confused shouts come, which usually did not happen, walk determinedly with purpose unless and until it’s obvious that you cannot proceed apace n then break for the theater entrance then exit post-haste). Say what you will, and judge if you must, about the unbound ethics of penny-ante stealing (which I confess unabashedly not with pride but candor), I can say with complete pragmatist authority that it worked. Which is what nine-year-old me singular-minded fucking cared about. And I will say now, as a person far, far removed from those angry reactive days prior to my slip-shod lucky (for me!) acculturation, the silly rousing jingoistic Star Wars film was my inspiration to expand my mind and pursue a different life (all while stealing theater tickets, as well as other things — life is complicated!).

Tastes are subjective (and mine prolly suck according to some/many), but will say: rewatching Star Wars, I felt a pang of nostalgia. But little more. Nostalgia like, I regret to report, Kundera’s sense of kitsche. I was surprised, upon revisiting the original (and fully acknowledging its transformative effect upon me) and the two follow-ons, at how uneven and just, not very good it was. Rewatching the series, I confess I was disappointed.

Which is OK!

But that arc, i.e. sumpin you loved as a child don’t ring yer bell as an adult, ain’t a fait accompli, don’t think, i.e. just cuz a body revisits something, it don’ necessarily have to suffer. Might even improve! (In the Twain sense of, in paraphrase: “When I was a kid, I couldn’t believe what a ass my old man was. When I got to be 35, I couldn’t believe how much the old man had learnt!”). Have reread The Brothers Dostoyevski. Holds up. For me. Cannery Row. Same. King Lear. Neruda. Blake, The Little Prince, Rashomon, The Rules of the Game, La Strada. Aldo fucking Leopold! For me (subjective, I know!), they all hold up after having experienced them in my misspent ne’er-do-well youth. Know Star Wars is a pop culture phenom, n ain’t tryn’ta judge it unfairly, but will say: Repo Man and A Boy and His Dog, to cite two contemporaries, holds up a whole lot better’n what Star Wars do upon rewatching. For me.

The non-breaking space doesn’t create a new line (using he Enter key as a carriage return does that), it populates – that is, is the only thing present within – each new line you want displayed as a new (seemingly empty) line (as stated above). Two lines:

@poleaxedbyboatwork: I loved Repo Man! A few years earlier, as an 11 year old already reading Niven, Asimov, and Heinlein I was quite dissapointed that Star Wars turned out to be a fantasy story instead of SciFi. But I enjoyed Star Wars nonetheless. I just never loved it.

I got the VHS for my kids and they all loved it and watched it until it fell apart, and then I got the DVDs, and they watched them a few hundred times, too. No accounting for taste.

@different-church-lady: I recall seeing a video a while back about that version of the film, and how much of the story was created afterward in editing and post-production (the editing was by George Lucas’s wife Marcia, and Richard Chew and Paul Hirsch–they got the Best Film Editing Oscar for it, and on the basis of the video it was well-deserved).

The most surprising thing they mentioned was that in the final Death Star battle, the original shooting script of the film contained no mention of the idea that the Death Star was about to destroy the rebel base. Everything that appears on screen related to that was effects inserts and re-used footage with looped dialogue by offscreen characters. That’s why the details of that part of the plot seem a bit awkwardly contrived–the movie wasn’t originally written that way! But it’s also necessary to give the climactic battle the degree of suspense and excitement that it has.

… The most surprising thing they mentioned was that in the final Death Star battle, the original shooting script of the film contained no mention of the idea that the Death Star was about to destroy the rebel base …

Imagining the confab, mid-shoot: “OK, time to film the Nauseating Star scene where everyone’s tummy hurts really, really bad. Hey wait! That’ll never answer. We gotta do better’n that! Hmm. Lesseee. The Foreboding Star? Nice foreshadowing, but not the zazz we need! Too spectral; no payoff. Oh, I know! How about the Verklempt Star? No, triple bankshot, too indirect. The Guilt Star? Be a shame to use that. The Go-to-your-Room Star? The We’re-Not-Kidding Star? What, what, what?”

I recall seeing a video a while back about that version of the film, and how much of the story was created afterward in editing and post-production.

The thing that I hate about that video is that it falsely implies that the movie was fixed by the editing. Editing is a central part of film making, and is used to create the narrative. It is rare when any film simply shoots the script.

That the Death Star stuff was not in the original shooting script is interesting. What the hell were they thinking?

@Brachiator: Yes, much of what was described there is really just normal moviemaking. But it’s interesting to see what they left out (lots of goofy footage of Luke on Tatooine that emphasizes how much of an American Graffiti character he really was).

Also, the detail that the opening crawl was originally this much, much longer wall of text that dumped all this information about the fallen Republic, the Jedi and the Sith, and was cut down largely by Brian De Palma after he complained about it in the rough cut.

@Major Major Major Major: so late to a long-dead thread, but just wanted to say “Hi there in Japan!” And that i just saw my first episodes of “Futurama” last week when i was holed up in a motel and *loved* it – laughed my ass off! Oh yeah, and some Trek TOS episodes as well – all campy goodness and fun.

Star Wars was my intro to Trek – as in, if I hadn’t loved it, I would never have given “Trek” the time of day.

Also, the detail that the opening crawl was originally this much, much longer wall of text that dumped all this information about the fallen Republic, the Jedi and the Sith, and was cut down largely by Brian De Palma after he complained about it in the rough cut.

This is one of the fun things about the video. Seeing again now Lucas, Spielberg, De Palma were Young Turks, encouraging each other.

And yeah, the elimination of the Tatooine stuff makes the movie more of a sci fi film. The worlds become stranger and we get off the planet faster. The story becomes more focused. It’s not about Luke’s old life, but the new world he tumbles into. The editing creates a new story and clarifies the narrative. By reducing the clutter, it also brings Ben Kenobi into sharper focus. A first time viewer might wonder whether he will be the main protagonist.

Not pictured: speakers playing both J-pop and a guy excitedly announcing bargains.

It could have been worse. There is a grocery store in Tokyo that played 90s American Gangster Rap (no, I’m not joking) while I was there. I think almost none of their regular customers understood the lyrics or just weren’t paying attention. I was half-convinced somebody must have spiked me with a shot of LSD before realizing that yes, I was still in Japan and it was actually happening.